The House of Many Ways
by the.goal.is.greatness
Summary: D is for lot of things... [D x Leon]


**Title:** The House of Many Ways  
**Genre:** Romance  
**Rating:** M  
**Pairing:** D x Leon  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** D is for lots of things…  
**Word Count:** 1,733  
**Warnings:** I have never read Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo, so I am going to assume that never happened.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

**A/N:** This was one of the first manga I ever read, and I still can't get over how beautiful the artwork it.

* * *

D is for lots of things. It sometimes boggles Leon's mind at how many things begin with D, how many things start with it. He wonders if it is incidental, that the Count goes by D, when it is something that is so all-consuming in his life now. He wonders if he looked at other letters and thought their words meaningless. If he looked at words like _duty_ and _danger_ and _deliverance_ and _dignity_ and thought that they were better words, more powerful words, magic words.

D is for _discovery_. It is for the way Leon begins to understand, begins to see, begins to fathom, so, so slowly he himself is not even aware of it. The way that one day he looks at D and sees a man, irritatingly oblivious and high-strung, but the next he sees a _man_. Oblivious to him, personally. Why doesn't D see him? Why is Leon noticing the shape of his ear, the curve of his nose? Why is he drowning in silken cloth and brilliantly mismatched eyes? Why is he awakening with the scent of tea and incense thick and heavy in his nose?

The creature Leon sees but can't bring himself to believe in. The _dragon_. It is the look on D's face every time Leon thinks of it – awestruck and astonished, in love and blinded with myth and wanting and waiting. He thinks of that look every time he sees a dragon, they immediately bring up the expression of incandescent joy on D's face and, underneath that, the thought that maybe Leon wants to be the one to make him look like that.

D is for _dreams_. It is Leon waking sweating and panting and hard, tangled in his sheets. The image of D flushed and wanting beneath him stays vivid in his mind for an entire day, making him throb in his pants. He shouldn't think this, but they are just dreams, right? He spends so much time with the Count, of course he would be featured in his subconscious mind. It means nothing. Nothing but the incessant feeling of need that consumes him when he sees D and yearns to make those dream real. It means nothing. Nothing.

It is _dangerous_ to follow D around for so many countless minutes, hours, days. Not only because it makes him dream of him more at night, but because there are always things that make Leon wonder if owning a pet shop isn't the most dangerous thing in the world. Sheep with lion's teeth. A siren song. A woman with hair that hisses and snaps like serpents. A plant dripping venom from its petals. Did he really see those things? Or were those dreams as well? Was that a women with scaled legs and webbed hands or a large koi? Were those flickering lights fairies or fireflies? Was that a small, pig-tailed little girl or a Pekinese? He didn't even know anymore.

When D _drinks_ his tea, Leon frowns and huffs and refuses when it is offered to him. He says it is because he does not drink tea, does not like the taste. He cannot tell D it is because when he imagines the taste of D it is tea – thick and cloying in this mouth, in his nose. That when he drinks tea and knows that is what D's mouth will taste like, he wonders if other parts of D taste like tea as well.

D is for _display_. His mother would call it peacocking. His fellow officers would call it posturing. He would call them idiots and say it is a lie. He is not offering to rearrange furniture and carry boxes to show off his muscles. He does not remove his jacket to reveal the hard breadth of his shoulders. He does not smoke cigarettes to accentuate the length of his fingers, the strength of his hands. He doesn't. He forces himself to say it over and over again to himself, even as he removes a cigarette and licks his lips. It means nothing.

D is for _damage_ and when Leon sees the state of the shop, he is momentarily frozen with dread. There is glass and tea and furniture everywhere. There are animals pitiful and lost. But there is no D. He is frantic with fear searching through the vandalism, chest tightly pinched in way that he was worried meant he might cry. D, D, D, he wants to scream his name, wants to tears off the heads of whoever did this, wants to find him. When he does, when he pulls D from the rubble, battered and bruised and delirious, Leon crushes him to his chest, shaking with relief, lax and petrified that he had almost lost this man. He thinks D will not remember this moment, so he presses his face into those beautiful locks and breathes in tea leaves and candy and drips slow tears into D's hair.

The Count fairly _dances_ as he twirls around the shop. He cajoles animals into eating, prepares dinner, pours tea, helps Chris with his homework, plucks the cigarette from Leon's mouth, all while maintaining the same carefully modulated steps, graceful and serene. His hips undulate, his arms flutter. But it never seems contrived or forced. Leon is mesmerized by the movements, eyes drawn to long legs, pale throat, narrow waist. He feels as if he is watching a ballet.

It is _dazzling_. The Count's smile. His hair is an otherworldly shade. His eyes mismatched. But his smile is the real miracle of D's face. It is honest and secretive, happy and sad, young and old. It is everything and it is nothing. There are mysteries in that smile. And Leon is beginning to think, with a blooming sort of terror, that he wants to uncover those mysteries for himself. He wants to be the one, the only one, that makes D give that rare smile – bright like the sun and surprised by the scope of his own joy. Leon wants to make it happen just for him. Shit.

D is for _delicate_. It is D's wrists, as thin and pale and graceful as a swan's neck. It is D's cheekbones, arched and defined. It is his waist, barely the width of Leon's hand length – he feels he could reach from one side to the other with ease. It is the narrow chest, the small, regal set of his shoulders, the point of his chin, the shell of his ear. It is how Leon wants to treat him, like a porcelain doll, put him on a pedestal and worship him.

When D asks him out to the park for a picnic, it takes Leon a half day to realize he is on a _date_. When the thought barrels across his mind like a stampede of horses he is struck dumb, immobile with confusion about what to do now that he knows they are on a date. How does he act? Does he want to be on a date? Yes! No – yes! The thought makes him dizzy with fright. But D, gentle, psychic, knowing D, takes his hand, intertwines their fingers, and smiles at him. And suddenly Leon is completely at ease, only happiness and nerves swirling within him now.

D is for _desire._ It is as if the date has broken down a wall inside his head. Before there was a divide between those amorous thoughts and Leon's own inner voice telling him they were daydreams, they were nothing. But now… now they were real, tangible things. Things he could dwell on, ponder, plan. He could wonder what D looked like beneath the silk, what his eyes looked like with the pupils blown with lust. He could think about touching and tasting and feeling that endless expanse of skin. He could think about those slim hands wrapped around him, pumping. He could think about thighs clenched around his hips. He could think about those things – but soon he would need to act. His fingers clenched, his lips tingled. He wanted more.

It had never crossed his mind that D might have more experience than him in the love between men world, that he would have a different idea of _dominance._ But that first night, it isn't D's clenching thighs, it's Leon's. And at first it is terrible and painful and too full, but then a single movement – and stars! Fireworks! Shit. Fuck. It's… it's… he can't… his hands are scrambling against D's shoulders (Delicate? No, not here), pulling him down and forward, arching up and up. Harder, please. So perfect. Didn't know that it could be like this. Too full? No, not full enough. He wants more, more of D, more of everything.

In the _dark_ it means something different. At night sometimes D wakes, delirious, confused, shouting things in languages Leon does not know, calling out for people he has never heard of. It takes long moments to pull him back to wakefulness, to this reality, to the here and now. He has to hold D, shaking and half-awake, in his arms, running soothing hands down a smooth back, murmuring into his hair, nonsense words that mean nothing, they only mean to remind D who he is here with, what he means to Leon.

Later, when Leon understands, the power play changes. And he thinks that _deep_ suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. He has been with women before, reveled in the feeling of sliding inside them. But D's body welcomes him in like quicksand. There is no end, no beginning. Only one of them. He wants to burn, wants to drown, wants to thrust into that tight warmth, wants bruising thighs, hair clenching, toe curling pleasure. Wants it all, every piece. Everything.

D is for _dawn_. The soft morning light is something that, before, Leon took for granted. But now there is a person to spill that light across, to highlight curves and edges, to accentuate the pouting, smiling mouth. It is perfect.


End file.
